The percentage of New Orleans children under 18 who live below the poverty level

43.8%

The Data Center, a nonpartisan group that issues reports about southeast Louisiana, issued its "New Orleans Youth Index" last week, comparing statistics about New Orleans and Louisiana kids to national numbers. By comparison, 27.9 percent of Louisiana children overall live below the poverty level, while the number in the United States as a whole is 21.7 percent — meaning New Orleans has almost exactly twice as many children in poverty as the the country as a whole.

New Orleans is doing much better than the rest of the state in one area, according to the Data Center: those who have graduated high school. In Louisiana, 19.2 percent of adults 18 to 24 have a high school diploma or less. In New Orleans, it was 13.1 percent, which statistically matched the U.S. rate.